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Learn By Doing Photography

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Last week my mom and I got up before then sun and headed out to a a great spot in the middle of the valley to capture the sun rise. It was beautiful this morning, perfectly quiet, perfectly still just my mom and I taking pictures. What a great way to start off the day! On the way home out a there was a huge wall of fog that crossed the road. Of course we pulled over and got the cameras out and took a few pictures. The fog was only there for about 10 more minutes before the sun started shinning through.

I found some excellent tutorials on how to shoot photos in the fog, mist or haze. As always Cambridge in Colour has an excellent one very informative! I also really liked FotoFlock.com – Fog Photography the basics. They get technical and talk about fooling the meter. Both were a good read, but I think the best tip out there was get up and get out and do it!

PhotoNetWorks has a great tutorial about getting up early and capturing that fog!

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography #34 Shallow Depth of Field (Bokeh)

This week we’re going to practice capturing a more shallow depth of field. This was one of the hardest concepts for me to understand when I first started. The first part clicked first – Aperture – o.k. if you use a larger aperture you will have a shallow depth of field so f/2.8 will yield a more shallow depth of field compared to a smaller aperture like f/22

The second part took a bit more time to comprehend. You have to know what lens you’re using as well as the relation between yourself and the subject! It takes time to understand and a lot of patience, but after awhile you will start to connect with your lenses. You will start to think that way. You will think I have my 50mm lens on, but my subject is 15 feet in front of me. You will automatically know you’re not going achieve a crazy shallow depth of field with that lens and your subject that far away. So either you need to switch lenses or start walking, move in closer to your subject.

This photograph was taken around 5ish the other evening. Before dinner we drove up the south hills to see what the valley looked like. Right now there are fires burning in the surrounding areas creating a valley of smoke.

The lock was on the gate in front of me, if I looked up this is what it looked liked to the West of Missoula towards Lolo. The air is thick with smoke right now, you open your front door to the smell of a camp fire. Last night the rains came for a bit, but not enough to put out the fires. Every August smoke fills the air, some years worse than others. When the smoke comes you will find the bridge downtown lined up with people and cameras capturing some pretty spectacular sunsets in the smoke filled haze of the setting sun.

I found a great video tutorial on Depth of Field!

Goes into excellent detail explaining how to achieve more shallow depth of field in your image. One of the best shallow depth of field explanations I have ever watched about the relation between:

1. Aperture
2. Focal Length
3. Distance between the camera and the subject

And he touches on how your sensor plays a part too…

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography #29 – Nighttime Photography

Nighttime… What a great time to go photograph. It’s a zen moment as you sit there under the stars just you and your camera. Taking a long exposure allows you the time to sit back and enjoy a quiet moment. That is exactly what I did… enjoyed the moment.

This week climb out of your comfort zone of shooting during the day, and wait until the sun has set before you venture out to try this week’s assignment… night photography!

Canon Mark III 16-35mm Lens set at 16mm ISO 50 243 seconds at f / 8.0

Helpful tips to remember when shooting Nighttime Photography:

1. Definitely a tripod or something to set you camera on.
2. Bring a flashlight or a phone to light the way. Once sitting in the dark it will be hard to see your settings.
3. Don’t be afraid to take lots of pictures trying out different exposures. I set my camera to bulb and take a short one at first to see if the composition is o.k. then I up the time until I get the exposure I like. I am sure there is a mathematical equation out there to figure it out, but I guess I don’t use it.

Found this video on The Photo/Video Show that has some great tips:

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography #27 – Zoom Motion Photography

This week give your zoom a go to see if you can create some motion in your picture! This one is fun to practice! I didn’t use a tripod, but next time I will try using one. For this picture we went on a walk and looked for flowers to try this technique on. What a came how with was a ton of blurry photos. This one was the best out of the batch. You need a real steady hand and smooth zoom motion to keep your subject in focus and the surrounding areas zooming in. The only way to get good at this one is practice and practice….

Give it a try! My settings for this one were 0.3 seconds at f/18

How to shoot the zoom motion effect:

1. Keep the camera as still as possible
2. Play with the shutter speed, right around 1 second seems to be pretty common, but all will be a bit different
3. Since you have such a slow shutter speed you will want to look for low light situations
4. Now try zooming in and out slowly

Very detailed video on how to shoot a zoom blur effect. Mike Browne did an amazing job at really explaining how to get a really interesting photograph with this technique.

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Roads are always fun to photograph.. You might choose a jam packed street with lots of people mid afternoon. Or a Sunday morning walk might find the same street completely vacant. You might choose a winding country road as I did or even a sidewalk. Whatever you decide to photograph is up to you. Try to think and see the road in a different light. There might be a road you drive every day, you like the way the street winds around the intersection, but instead of taking the picture during a busy afternoon come back when it’s not to busy.

For my picture I headed to the mountains with my daughter Kat for a hike. We were driving home when we looked to the south and saw some very low clouds hanging over Pattee Canyon. Of course what does one do when they see low clouds – you chase them in a hope to touch the clouds. We made it to the top of the mountain, but the clouds were always just a bit in front of us. We didn’t touch the clouds today but instead ended up on a beautiful hike. What we found were Lupine, yarrow a whole lot of rain as well as the distant sound of an owl hooting at us.

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

This week I had a very hard time finding a video, if you have a good tutorial on shooting roads please let me know. This one may not have many tips, but he ends it with some lovely advice about searching for different angles in photography. Not just angles, but new ideas to photograph out of your comfort zone to stimulate your imagination and make you a better photographer.

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Macro is one of my favorite ways to shoot, I didn’t even have to leave the house for this weeks assignment instead I looked around for some freshness and found some lemons and tomatoes to play with.

For these pictures I tried something different. I bought a light tracer awhile back for a different project and thought I would give it a try this week and see what happened. It was fun, it’s not very big only about 12 x 12, but plenty big for a single slice of lemon.

The light came up from the bottom so I didn’t need any flash or external light. Not sure what to try next on there, maybe some rice? I don’t know, any ideas?

You don’t have to shoot on a light tracer or anything just get as close as you can to your subject!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Tony Northruphas another great tutorial on Macro Photography. Be sure to check out his book “Stunning Digital Photography” There are some great tips in there, I recently bought it and thought it was great, lots of tips!

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

This past weekend we had the privilege of watching our friends dog Roy for the weekend. All four of us fell in love with this guy, he was perfect! Kat wanted to introduce him to the entire neighborhood. So we walked and walked, we made the rounds and introduced our friends to our guest for the weekend. We walked to the parks and played and walked to the store just to have a destination on our walk.

I had fun taking pictures of my kids and Roy as we walked. I practiced walking backwards while they walked towards me. That set of pictures didn’t really turn out. It’s hard to walk and photograph at the same time!

This week pick up your camera and take a picture of your sweet puppy, cat lizard or whoever your sweet love is! If you don’t currently have a pet, then call a friend and ask if you can take a picture of their pet!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Tips of photographing your pet:

1. Keep the eyes sharp.
2. If possible use natural light.
3. Capture the personality, if your dog sleeps all day capturing him yawning, if he runs all the time try to catch him in action.
4. Try different angles and techniques maybe you want to try a silhouette or a panning motion.
5. Think about your background, try to find something with out to many distractions.
6. Get in close – you hear that one all the time, but it’s true!
6. Be Patient.

Do you have a tip to add to the list? If so let me know, I would be happy to add it!

I found this video by VideoJug talking about how to photograph your pet

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography #18 – Negative Space in Photography

Yesterday my daughter and I went looking for negative space. We had hot chocolate at the cafe and wandered the streets downtown in search of negative space. Together we took lots of pictures this being my favorite. It has nothing to do with my attempt at negative space, but everything to do with this giggling, energetic full of life 6 year old I got to spend the day with. I too will practice more this week on negative space, although the idea of taking a picture with negative space sounds easy, as with everything you need to practice and look for it.

Empty space that allows your subjects to breath a little bit. The absence of content does not mean the absence of interest. Negative space is used to bring your eye to the subject.
Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject.

This video is amazing! An excellent tutorial explaining negative space… After you check out this video be sure to go to the website and find more photography gems on www.theartofphotography.tv!

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography Assignment #16 – Photographing Flowers

Spring is in the air… so head out and find some flowers to photograph this week. You might be able to step outside and find some tulips or crocus flowers springing up. This morning my walk didn’t find any that were working for me so I went to the flower store and found this brilliant red flower to photograph. Now I have a bouquet of flowers to enjoy and to photograph this week!

Canon 60D Exposure 1/10 sec at f/5.6

This video by LearnMyShot has some helpful tips on lighting in the house. You might pick up a tip or two during this video on where to place the lights or how to use black poster board to direct your light

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

Learn by Doing Photography – Practice your photography skills with weekly photography assignments. I will post a new assignment every Friday, you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!

All textures look different depending on the light used. Experiment this week with different lights and different textures. What happens when the light is coming from the side compared to the top. What effect does it have if you’re shooting on a cloudy day versus a sunny day.

Textures are subtle, they don’t just jump out at you. You have to look for them. On my walk this morning I took a lot of pictures, but when I got home and looked at them nothing jumped out at me. It was a cloudy day so my brick wall looked flat as did the grass as did everything else I took a picture of. So when I got home I looked around for something in the house, I found these lentils. The top picture is with light coming from the left. On the bottom picture they are placed in even light. On the second one you barely see the rows I made with my fingers

Be sure to watch the video below, it’s quick and to the point.

The second picture has even light which lost all depth. Light plays such an important part of photography, something I am still trying to understand! I will be practicing all week on this assignment!

How to Photograph Texture

Excellent tutorial on the not only texture, but also understanding how important the position of your light is!

Remember you can post your pictures at the bottom of this post or on the DigitalCamFan Facebook. If you have any questions please refer to the guidelines, if you have no questions jump right in any time!